Kolkata: BCCI President Sourav Ganguly spoke out over Kohli’s inflammatory words, stating that the board will deal with the situation responsibly following the India Test skipper’s comments ahead of India’s departure for the South Africa tour.
“No statements, no press conference. We will deal with it appropriately, leave it to (the) BCCI,” Ganguly said local media persons on Thursday.
Kohli, at his pre-departure news conference ahead of the tour of South Africa, claimed that he was never asked to remain on as T20 skipper when he made his intentions clear on relinquishing the post. “Whatever was said about the communication that happened about the decision that was made was inaccurate. I was contacted one-and-a-half hours before the selection meeting on December 8 for the Test series and there was no prior communication to me at all since I announced my decision on T20I captaincy.”
However, this was in direct opposition to Ganguly’s maiden statement, which came months after Kohli stood down as T20I captain.”We had requested Virat not to step down as T20 captain but he didn’t want to continue as captain,” Ganguly had said. “So, the selectors felt that they cannot have two white-ball captains in two white-ball formats. That’s too much of leadership.”
In the meantime several notable people from cricket fraternity had opinionated about this issue. Sunil Gavaskar was one of them who said that the BCCI needed to communicate more clearly – and publicly – on big selection decisions in future, to avoid such issues. “Yes, it always helps to have a clear line of communication so that there is no speculation. So from now, from what has happened, there should be a clear line of communication and the chairman of the selection committee can come down and say why [someone] has been picked and why [someone] has not been picked.
